Industry News

This story is a collaboration between New York and ProPublica , an independent nonprofit newsroom. In mid-May, Steve Preston, who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the final two years of the George W.

Deep-income targeting, where the focus is on housing those with the lowest incomes, can mean dramatically different things to affordable rental housing developers in different states, and even for those building in different market areas within the same state.

The belief that households should not spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing has been a foundation of U.S. housing policy for more than three decades. Households that spend more than this level are typically defined as "cost burdened."

Since the general election, many in the affordable housing and community development fields have expressed concern that both impending budget pressures and tax reforms will be disastrous for programs that provide affordable housing. It might be easy to assign these challenges to the outcomes of the national election and an assumption that there's a lack of support for housing and community development by the majority party.

Alexandria has 16,000 fewer homes that are affordable on the free market than it did 17 years ago, according to a recent report. That's a loss of over 90% of what was available in 2000, and enough to house the entire population of Falls Church, and then some.

A non-profit organization in Alexandria is calling for the city council to invest more funds to build and preserve affordable housing in the area, and has proposed land owned by Metro as potential sites for new housing.

On May 27, residents of the Del Ray neighborhood awoke to find their neighborhood plastered with posters bearing racist messages of hate against black Americans and against Islam. Like many Alexandrians, Lillian Patterson was shocked when she she heard about the racist posters put up in Del Ray.